Reaction to Jones and Wilson's chaprer (week 7)

This chapter introduced a lot of scientific constructs. I would guess the target audience of this book is general public because some of the contents are fundamental to several scientific disciplines. Although I know some of the constructs already, this chapter kind of refreshed my memory. Of courses, there are also concepts that are new to me. Godel’s incompleteness theorem is one of them.

This theorem attracts me because it deals with artificial intelligence and claims that computers can never be smarter than human beings because computers cannot discover new things. Actually, I am not quite sure about that because machine can be designed to do more than repetitive work. I know there are scientists who are against this claim. Although I cannot agree with the reasoning part, I do think the conclusion makes more sense than the given reason for the conclusion.

But what does intelligence really mean? Relying on mathematical algorithms and taking advantage of computer’s strength in computing, artificial intelligence researchers have made progress in making computers that behave like human beings, but does that mean computers are as smart as human being? (Searle, 1980). Is Google translation intelligent? Is human intelligence is the de facto standard of intelligence for computers.

To make computers think as human beings, a lot of scientists have taken is to explore how human intelligence works so that they can mimic it in computers. Research on human intelligence involves a lot of cognitive, biological and neural research. This approach may also mean that computers will inherit short comings of human beings. However, I do have the feeling that human beings can never fully understand how their own intelligence works. Does that mean computers based on mimicking human intelligence can never be smarter than human beings? Even if we can make computers that completely resemble human beings, do we really need computers that sometimes are as stupid as human beings, who are in the process of destroying this planet?

Reference:

Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, Brains, and Programs. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3.